


Bear It Out Even to the Edge

by thrace



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thrace/pseuds/thrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when you try to play it cool with the woman you love and her fiancé.</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1011037">Could Have Been A Year.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mulan has always known there are different types of bravery—she has better reason than most to know it. There is the bravery of standing before a swinging sword, and there is the bravery of standing by one’s convictions. And there are always consequences for bravery. She doesn’t regret that she finally was brave enough to tell Aurora the truth, but ancestors help her, it has made her life awkward.

It’s a balancing act, being around the woman she loves and that woman’s intended, who also happens to be one of Mulan’s closest comrades, but she would rather be here than, say, keeping up the appearance of being a man to avoid being executed. And though guilt is unavoidable every time she looks at Phillip or even hears his name, it’s all completely overridden by the way her heart blooms around Aurora. 

Perhaps the relief of being allowed a second chance is masking the pain of telling Aurora “I love you” and not hearing it in return. All Mulan knows is that she can bear to see Aurora with Phillip because she knows that the alternative was so much worse. She would rather Aurora be alive and awkward around her than dead and lost forever.

*

Of course, Aurora is so awkward around Mulan now that even Phillip realizes something is amiss. “Are you two having a fight?” he asks Mulan one day while they’re sparring.

She sidesteps his overhand blow and slaps him a good one on the arm with the flat of her practice blade in one flowing movement. “That was sloppy. And no.”

“Are you sure?” asks Phillip, resetting his stance before thrusting with his sword. 

Mulan parries it to the side. “Yes. Adjust your footwork.”

Phillip moves his feet into a stronger stance, allowing him to move more freely, and tries again. Mulan counters, closing in quickly with her blade to Phillip’s throat. “You are distracted today,” she says, watching his face for telltale signs of a lie.

Phillip swallows under the blunted wooden sword against his Adam’s apple. “Or you’re just a bloody demon on the battlefield.”

Mulan’s answering smile is torn between wolfish and wistful, twisting her mouth unpleasantly. “You’re distracted,” she says, and lowers her sword. “The baby.”

Phillip huffs and moves back, one hand pushing back his sweaty hair. “Of course I am. You tell me one of your ancestors came to you in a vision and said the birth would be difficult—that’s distracting. We have healers from every corner of the realm fighting over a solution and no solution. Distracted isn’t even the right word for it.” 

“I am grateful you believed me,” says Mulan, pretending to examine her sword for damage. 

“I can’t afford not to believe you, not in this matter,” says Phillip. He begins to pace the practice ring, feet kicking up sawdust. “Even if you were my worst enemy I wouldn’t take that chance. And you are my best friend.”

Mulan is well-practiced by now at burying the guilt those words stab into her. Courage means accepting consequences, and when she confessed all to Aurora she did so knowing she could lose everything. But honor means she cannot pursue a promised woman. She takes great pains to treat Aurora exactly as she did before, no more and no less. She does not allow herself to think about what would happen if Aurora felt the same.

"Again,” she says, and this time she lets Phillip win. 

*

Though the castle is large, it’s impossible to avoid anyone for any length of time, especially since Mulan is often needed on official business. She has her head down after leaving a defense council in Phillip’s war room, mind full of patrol assignments and supply figures, when she literally runs into Aurora. Aurora has her head similarly down, buried in a book, and she startles badly when Mulan bumps her.

“Mulan,” says Aurora, one hand over her heart, the other automatically marking her place. The fright has brought a rosy flush to her cheeks, scattered several locks of hair across her face. Mulan can barely stand the sight of her.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You’re always so quiet,” says Aurora.

“Phillip has asked me to wear a bell,” jokes Mulan. It’s his most common complaint about her, that she cat-foots through the palace far too quietly for comfort. She can see that Aurora is amused by the image, but where once she might have continued to banter about how ridiculous Mulan would look in a little belled collar, now she just stands silently with her hands holding her book in front of her. Mulan’s smile disappears. “Anyway, I have something I must do.”

“Of course,” says Aurora. But she doesn’t move aside.

Mulan stares at her and strains against her own body’s urge to reach out, to touch, to linger. It’s no more than a moment, but it stretches almost infinitely for Mulan, a vast yearning towards Aurora that she forces herself to squash with ruthless determination. She said she would not pressure Aurora, that she had no expectation, and she will keep her word. 

Perhaps Aurora notices how rigidly Mulan is holding herself back; perhaps she simply wants to fill the silence between them. “Mulan,” she says softly.

Mulan makes a choked noise, half buried in her throat. “Good day, princess,” she says, and strides off looking as businesslike as possible and not at all as though she is running away.

*

The children of the palace regard Mulan as a curiosity. She is used to it; she has traveled farther than anyone they know and comes from a land so distant many of them have never heard of it. And of course she is Phillip’s closest advisor and confidant, which carries a certain cachet with the palace residents. At first she was reservedly polite with them and they were shy in turn. But when she saw two of the cook’s boys steal a toy from one of the washerwomen’s daughters, her retribution was swift, and thereafter the children lost their shyness and felt free to speak to her as they pleased. By now she knows what that small tug on the edge of her cloak means, and is accustomed to turning around to find a tiny, solemn human or three waiting behind her with a question.

Today she is coming from yet another meeting with Phillip’s medical advisors and her stomach is grumbling from missing a meal. Just outside the kitchens she feels the proprietary tug and indeed, two children have followed her downstairs. “Captain Mulan,” says Mathilde, the daughter of one of kitchen maids.

“Yes, Mathilde,” says Mulan patiently.

“Is it true you killed a wraith?” Mathilde asks. 

“Yes,” says Mulan. “With the help of Princess Aurora, we destroyed the wraith that took Prince Phillip’s soul.”

“I told you,” say Mathilde’s friend, another daughter of a kitchen maid. Her mother is new in the palace and Mulan thinks her name is Geraldine. She does try to remember the children’s names but there are quite a few of them.

“Was it scary?” asks Geraldine.

“Captain Mulan doesn’t get scared,” says Mathilde.

“I have been scared many times,” says Mulan, remaining serious despite the amusing way both children’s mouths open. “But to be a warrior does not mean you lose all fear. It means you learn to confront your fear and overcome it. Then you may use it as you need to make you stronger in battle.”

“Okay,” says Mathilde, clearly not understanding it all but not wanting to let on. “May we see your sword?”

Mulan hears a tiny cough from around the corner, as though someone is restraining themselves from making a sound. “Perhaps another day,” she tells Mathilde with one eye cast down the corridor. “If you are good.” 

“We will!” Mathilde promises, already grabbing Geraldine’s hand so they can scamper away. 

As soon as the girls are gone, a slippered foot rounds the corner, followed by the rest of Aurora in a gown of white and dark azure. “You’re better with children than you used to be,” she notes.

Mulan cannot say this is because she spent long months looking after Roland, son of Robin Hood. Instead she just smiles blandly, as is her wont these days when faced with Aurora. “What brings you down to the kitchens, highness?” she asks.

“An absurd level of hunger,” Aurora admits. Her left hand rubs her belly absentmindedly, the slightest hint of thickening about the waist the only clue that she is with child. Mulan, who daily sees Aurora with the observant eye of one who loves her, can see the difference as bold as daylight.

“You should be resting. Let me have a servant bring you something.”

“Stop. I’m down here already. There’s no point in making someone drag themselves up to my chambers,” says Aurora, sounding more like the traveling companion of Mulan’s past than the princess of today. “And you know that my physician advised me to take exercise every day. Honestly Mulan, you and Phillip act like I’m going to break at any second.”

Mulan holds tightly to her counsel that once upon a time Aurora very well did break, and nearly took Mulan with her. “Of course. Enjoy your meal.” She sweeps her cloak around, preparing to leave so she can be hungry elsewhere.

“Didn’t you come down here to eat too?” Aurora asks pointedly.

“No, I was just…passing by,” says Mulan. Her stomach gurgles with impeccable timing, so loud that it nearly echoes down the stone corridor.

Aurora sighs. “Mulan, I know I’ve been…distant. But can we just, I don’t know, sit and eat a meal in peace? I want to do that with you again.”

Mulan’s face remains as neutral as ever. “I am yours to command, princess.”

Aurora looks as though she wants to stamp her foot. “And can you stop being so formal? After everything we’ve been through I deserve to be just Aurora with you.”

Mulan wants so badly to give in to the request. She wants to have dinner with Aurora and watch her smile and laugh. But then she will want to touch Aurora’s hand, and to caress her cheek, and to bury her nose in the crook of Aurora’s neck. Her greatest—her _only_ concern is keeping Aurora alive, not with selfish pursuits. So she shakes her head softly. “You deserve much more than I can give you,” says Mulan. “Enjoy your meal.”

Mulan resolutely keeps her eyes on the end of the corridor as she marches away and so does not see Aurora on the verge of tears. 

*

As Aurora’s due date approaches, Mulan grows ever more desperate to find a way to ensure her survival through the delivery. She can still remember supervising the servants who took Aurora’s body away in the other timeline—Phillip had been completely unable to face the problem so Mulan had sent him to pack for their quest. There had been so much blood, soaked through the sheets and into the mattress. Mulan, who has seen enough arterial spray on the battlefield to last a lifetime, could hardly believe that much blood came from Aurora’s body. The midwives had told her that sometimes women had difficult births because the baby was in the wrong position. They had tried to cut the baby free and failed.

The physicians they’ve consulted have mostly had the same answer—they too would attempt to cut the baby free in that situation. A few suggested herbs and tonics but that will not be enough, not nearly enough. Mulan is beginning to think more and more that the only solution lies in magic. After all, it saved Aurora once; why couldn’t it do so again?

“Phillip,” she says one day while they’re in the library sorting through medical texts from far-flung lands that are no help whatsoever. “Perhaps we should reconsider asking Aurora about getting a witch’s help.”

Phillip distractedly pages through a very dry-looking tome with tiny text. “You know she doesn’t trust witches.”

Indeed Aurora does not, not after everything they went through with Cora and the stories Emma and Snow told them about the Evil Queen ( _“Regina,_ ” Emma had emphasized. “She’s…well, I think she’s getting better. Kind of.”) and Rumpelstiltskin. 

“But perhaps it didn’t have to be a witch, just any magical being who could help,” says Mulan. “The rumors could be true.”

Phillip shrugs, continuing to read with a frown. Of the two of them, he is the better scholar, but barely. Aurora is better at this than both of them combined. “Feel free to bring it up with her. You know she’ll say no.”

Being told no has never stopped Mulan from trying anyway.

*

“No,” says Aurora.

“Please, princess, we both know not all magic is bad.”

“But there is no one who wields it who I trust.”

“It would just be to ensure the child’s health,” Mulan says, cajoling. 

Aurora continues at her needlepoint, embroidering tiny flowers into the hem of a similarly tiny nightgown. Mulan remembers embroidering a rich piece of red cloth, head bent over a needle and costly golden thread by firelight. All in another time, one she hopes desperately to avert. “The midwives all say my child is fine. She is moving, exactly as she should.”

Mulan pauses. “She?” 

Aurora peeks up, the hint of a genuine smile tugging at her mouth, the first of her smile that Mulan has seen in weeks. “I believe so.”

Mulan can’t help but flick her eyes down to Aurora’s stomach, where her pregnancy has only recently become obvious. She is smaller than other women who are six months with child but the midwives have been very reassuring that these things vary. “She,” Mulan repeats again, voice full of wonder. “What will you call her?”

“We haven’t decided yet,” says Aurora, hand gravitating instinctively to her little bump. Her smile grows teasing. “Mulan is a good girl’s name.”

Mulan twitches, contorts her mouth into the best approximation of a smile that she can manage. It’s not much. “I would be honored.”

Aurora seems to remember all at once why Mulan would take such a jest badly and her smile crumbles. She lays her needlepoint in her lap, hands trying to cross the distance between them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Please consider magic,” Mulan says softly, leaning away. “Phillip could not survive without you.”

“You act as though you’ve seen my fate,” says Aurora. Her hands are still caught mid-reach, waiting to touch. “Sometimes it scares me, Mulan. Tell me truly why you’re so concerned. Or did our travels together mean nothing to you?”

“You know they meant everything to me,” Mulan says. She grips the handle of her sword, just to have something to hold on to. “Please, princess. I have heard of a fairy who lives near the palace. I’m going to ask for her counsel with or without your permission.”

“Then go,” says Aurora haughtily. “Clearly you know better than me.” Her hands withdraw and resume their needlepoint.

So Mulan does, hating herself for always being the one to walk away in the name of duty.

*

Phillip wants to go with her to see the fairy but Mulan insists he stay at the castle. “If there is anything of substance to the rumors, I will return with her. If not, then you will save yourself a trip,” says Mulan. Phillip frets and tries to make her overpack and has the kitchens wrap up her favorite cheeses with good hardtack and the venison smoked the way she likes it. 

“Return soon,” he says.

“Stop worrying,” she replies. “You sound worse than Aurora.”

Aurora has not come out to see Mulan off, as she would any other time. Phillip doesn’t miss Mulan’s preoccupied look up at the tower where the royal bedchamber is located. “I wish you’d stop fighting,” Phillip says with a sigh. “What is the point of winning peace in the kingdom if I don’t have peace in my household.”

Mulan scoffs at him. “And who won this peace?”

“Go see your fairy,” says Phillip, grinning. 

Mulan allows herself one last glance up, then she mounts her horse smoothly and rides. Her mind is on the task at hand now, and not on the slight ripple of fabric at Aurora’s window. 

*

The fairy of rumor is at least two days’ ride from the palace. The first night, Mulan scouts out a place to sleep, sees to her horse, and lies down thinking of hair like autumn leaves and eyes the blue of a placid lake in winter. She rises with the dawn and continues, ever mindful of the castle at her back. 

Coming on midday she feels a tingle race over her skin and knows she’s close. There’s nothing quite like the feel of magic.

Abruptly forest turns to clearing, trees giving way to springy green moss with tiny flowers dotting the clearing in various shades of blue and purple. Mulan dismounts, a plea already forming on her lips. “Hello?” she calls out. “My name is Mulan. I’ve come for help.”

Silence greets her.

“Hello?” she tries again. “Please, I come on behalf of Princess Aurora. Her life is in danger. I need help.”

Still silence.

Mulan kneels on the moss, inhaling the earthy scent, feeling the low-level buzz in the air that screams magic. She closes her eyes, breathes in once to focus, breathes out to send her senses sprawling through the clearing. In that other place, that other time, she was told she could have another chance through her purity of heart. That is the key, she thinks, when appealing to magical beings. They have their own rules and quirks and she is happy to play along as long as she gets what she wants. She once rode to the world’s edge for Aurora. She can wait out a shy fairy. 

Hours pass and still Mulan thinks only of Aurora. She thinks about what it means to love a woman who will not, cannot love her in return. She once tried to stop loving Aurora and it led to ruin. 

Her legs have gone almost totally numb by the time she hears the faintest tinkle of noise. At first she mistakes it for a breeze, something rustling the surrounding branches. Then she hears it again: a distant shimmering, natural yet not of nature. Mulan opens her eyes and sees a glittering golden trail wending its way across the clearing. “Hello?” she whispers.

The trail comes close enough to resolve itself into a tiny being, a person in miniature save for her fluttering wings. “Why have you come here?” she asks. “No one comes here anymore.”

“My name is Mulan. I heard there was a fairy still in these lands,” says Mulan, “And I have desperate need of good magic.”

The fairy seems to brighten, though it’s hard to discern her features as she hovers about. “Whatever for? No magic comes without its price.”

“There is a princess nearby. She is with child. I want to make sure she survives the birth,” says Mulan.

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Mulan is always careful to avoid revealing that she has lived through Aurora’s pregnancy once, some survival instinct warning her that her meddling must remain a secret. “I have been dreaming. That the birth goes wrong and that both mother and child perish. I believe my ancestors sent these dreams to me.”

“These are normal fears for any parent.”

“Oh—I’m not—she’s not—it’s not my child. She is betrothed to Prince Phillip. I am simply their friend,” says Mulan in a hurry. 

The fairy blinks, a ripple trembles through the air, and suddenly she is the size of a normal human and kneeling in a mirror of Mulan’s position. “A very good friend, to care this much,” she says, quite astutely.

“I love her,” says Mulan. “That she loves another matters not.”

The fairy clasps her hands over her heart and makes a tremulous face. “Oh my. Oh dear. Unrequited love. It’s been so long since anyone’s come to me with that.” Mulan blinks at her. 

“My problem is not unrequited love,” says Mulan slowly.

The fairy exhales heavily. “Oh good. You’d think it would get around that you can’t magically make someone love you. People were always asking us for love potions. ‘Make the crofter’s daughter love me’, same old story.” She rolls her eyes in a distinctly un-fairylike fashion. 

“So you do you have magic,” says Mulan. This is not proceeding how she thought it would at all.

The fairy draws herself up, the picture of indignation. “Of course I do. I am the fairy Mira. All my sisters were taken by the curse. I was in another land when it came and when I popped back into the Enchanted Forest I was alone. No one’s asked for my help in so long I was beginning to think I’d never get to use fairy dust again.” 

“My apologies.” Mulan is sincere, bowing her head politely.

Mira’s good humor returns right away. “Come on, tell me all about it. I haven’t heard a good unrequited love story in ages.”

“Um,” says Mulan. Perhaps this is the fairy’s price, or perhaps she’s simply lonely. One way or another Mulan will coax a solution from her. So she launches into as condensed an explanation as possible of how she came to be in love with an unobtainable woman. As she says it all out loud she’s aware of how ridiculous it must sound—first finding Phillip, then Aurora, then losing Phillip, nearly losing Aurora, getting Phillip back, and on the verge of losing Aurora again. She has possibly spent more time and effort keeping the two of them safe and together than she has fighting the Huns.

At the end, the fairy sighs. “Okay. You’ve convinced me,” she says.

“I haven’t told you what I need,” says Mulan.

“You came all this way for Aurora, didn’t you?” Mira flaps her wings once to punctuate the question. 

Mulan tries to keep from bursting with relief. “Then you will help?”

“Of course,” says the fairy. “True love is on the line. Lead on.”

*

The return journey is faster. The entire way back to the castle, the fairy badgers Mulan for details of her life and how she came to love Aurora and why she would stay without any hope of ever being loved back. “I cannot force her to love me, nor can I force myself to stop loving her,” Mulan says through gritted teeth while the fairy hovers over her shoulder. She has never met a fairy, but she is beginning to wonder if they are all this flighty.

“That,” the fairy pronounces, “Is a tragedy.” 

Mulan is glad to return home and turn her onto the real problem at hand.

Phillip greets her in the courtyard, slapping her shoulder hard enough to send up a cloud of dust. “Success?” he asks.

Mira flitters out from behind Mulan’s head. “Aren’t you handsome!” she exclaims, and with that disconcerting pop she turns human-sized again. “I’m Mira, and I’m here to help.” She bustles off, marching into the castle proper without an invitation.

Phillip stares after her momentarily, then back at Mulan, his face begging for an explanation.

“She’s a fairy and she offered to help,” says Mulan with a shrug. “You tell her no.”

They have to hurry to catch up to Mira as she wanders through the castle, prodding at hangings and peering at suits of armor. She seems to be gravitating towards the arboretum, where Mulan knows Aurora likes to take her midday meal. Perhaps she has an innate fairy-sense about these kinds of things. 

“How do you know we can trust her?” Phillip whispers.

“I don’t,” Mulan whispers back. “But she’s the best option I have found so far.” 

“What if Aurora doesn’t—”

“Then I will find another solution.” Mulan’s tone, even dulled by whispering, brooks no argument. They’re nearly to the arboretum by now and Mulan breaks into a jog to make sure Mira doesn’t startle Aurora.

Aurora spots her first, eye long accustomed to seeking out the black and red swirl of motion that means Mulan has returned. “You’re back!” she says, face lighting up though Mulan was hardly gone three days. If it reminds Mulan of another time, another return to this very spot, she does not give it away. 

“Princess, allow me to introduce the fairy Mira,” says Mulan, one gloved hand sweeping over their newcomer.

“I see what you mean,” Mira says out of the side of her mouth to Mulan, with a complete lack of subtlety. Mulan clenches her teeth at Mira, who ignores her completely to walk around Aurora as though inspecting her. 

“Fairy?” Aurora echoes, returning Mira’s inspection with all the dignified haughtiness of her royal lineage and upbringing. Evidently she takes exception to being examined like an item at market. 

“Mulan told me everything,” says Mira. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this problem.”

“What problem?” asks Aurora.

Mulan begins to hear warning bells but everything is moving too fast for her to get a word in edgewise.

“Mulan’s unrequited love of course,” says Mira, and continues on as though she hasn’t just nearly ruined three people’s lives.

*

Before Aurora or Phillip can quite recover from the fireworks Mira threw into their midst, Mulan has yanked her aside into an alcove. “What are you doing?” she hisses.

“Helping you,” says Mira, quite innocently.

“I brought you here to help _Aurora_.” Mulan gestures in Aurora’s general direction. 

“But you’re the one who found me.” Mira seems genuinely confused, which is not helping to restrain Mulan’s temper in the least.

“You cannot tell Phillip I love Aurora. And Aurora needs not be reminded of it. I told her I would never pressure her.” Mulan’s hands go to her hair, pulling the skin taught at her temples. 

“Well you might have mentioned that when you came to my clearing asking for my help,” says Mira.

Mulan’s words explode in a puff of air. “ _I did!_ ”

“Oh.” Mira’s eyes shift side to side and Mulan closes in on it like an arrow to a target. 

“Tell me truly. Are you a real fairy? Do you have magic that can help Aurora?” Even human-sized, Mira is a delicate little thing and Mulan looms large with all the presence of a trained soldier.

“I am a fairy!” Mira insists. “Just, I was never very good at listening. I was in training.”

Mulan peels away, hand now massaging her head. “In training. What does that mean?”

Mira screws up her face, as though she might cry. “I have my wings but I was never confirmed by the Blue Fairy. It was sort of a probationary period. That’s why I was out of the realm when the curse struck. I was supposed to find someone whose wish I could grant that would make me worthy. I only have enough fairy dust for one wish.”

“Aurora’s _life_ is at stake,” says Mulan, which is when Phillip rounds the corner looking extremely confused.

“Mulan, what’s going on?” he asks.

“Nothing. Mira is…” She flaps her hands a bit.

“Unrequited love? I thought Mira was going to help Aurora?” Phillip is frowning and she can see his mind is trying to fit puzzle pieces together. 

“She is,” says Mulan. She bores into Mira with her hardest stare and Mira nods, the carefree fairy of before.

Now Aurora joins them, moving Phillip aside so she can stand imperiously in the alcove’s entrance with her hands on her hips. The three of them are cowed in her presence. “That’s up to me. Mira, come along. The two of you can go decide what’s best for me somewhere else.” She marches off with a for-once subdued Mira in tow, and in just a few seconds Phillip and Mulan are left staring at each other in awkward silence.

“Mulan,” he begins, hands twisting in front of his belt buckle. “What was that about your unrequited love?”

Mulan can’t even form words, can’t begin to speak to him about what she feels. They have saved each other’s lives, witnessed any number of physical indignities, trusted each other where no one else would—and still she cannot admit the truth to Phillip. 

“I mean,” Phillip continues hastily. “I know we’re friends but surely you know I am—I mean, you are my sister. And I value your loyalty and service beyond all others. But I don’t feel that way—”

Mulan nearly guffaws out loud at Phillip’s assumption. “No!” she interrupts him. “That was not about you. I think of you the same way, Phillip. I mean, as my brother.”

He visibly sags with relief. “Oh good. That was shaping up to be the most awkward moment of my life.”

“Mine as well,” says Mulan.

Phillip brightens. “Then who is it? Perhaps I can help. I do have a certain amount of influence, after all.”

“It’s…no one. No one you need concern yourself with,” says Mulan, looking down at the floor lest her face give it away. She is hurting Phillip in her heart, every moment of every day, and here he is offering his help. She would confess all but for the fear, and she sneers at herself in the back of her mind that she is a coward, but she cannot be parted from Aurora until she knows Aurora is safe.


	2. Chapter 2

Nothing spreads faster than palace gossip, and this bit is particularly juicy. Mulan, captain of the guard, stoically polite to a fault, known to have rebuffed every advance, is in love. The maids are all aflutter with the news and a few of the guards attempted to rib their captain over it until she nearly froze the barracks with the ice in her glare. 

The other story burning up wagging palace tongues is their new resident fairy. Aurora has taken Mira into her confidence and, as the fairy apologizes to Mulan, she cannot reveal what they talk about when Mira is visiting from her glade. “We’re working on her wish,” Mira says, sounding positively giddy. “I’m going to make it the best wish ever granted.”

“Is it not simple to wish for a healthy child and safe delivery?” Mulan grumbles, but is met with a deluge of fairy-speak on technicalities and details and no gain without sacrifice. She should have known magic would never be simple.

So life at the palace returns almost to normal. Mulan trains the soldiers and watches over the realm, then spends her spare moments worrying and researching fairy magic and being avoided by Aurora. 

But Phillip will not stop questioning her about her unrequited love. “You’re my friend and I want you to be happy,” he keeps insisting, at which point Mulan will usually go turn out the palace guard for exhaustive combat training that ends with her facing four or five men at once—which she invariably must lose as numbers overwhelm her. The guard have been sharply instructed not to hold back in the least and Mulan is currently sporting an incredible black eye and a limp.

She’s lurking in the kitchens after another such bout, searching for a meal she can nurse alone, when the tug on her cloak comes. It’s Mathilde and Geraldine again, this time with Agnes, daughter of one of Aurora’s handmaidens. Mulan greets them all by name and their faces light up at being remembered.

“Hello Captain Mulan,” says Mathilde. “Are you all right?”

Mulan ignores the twinge in her ribs that says she should slow down. “I am fine,” she says. “May I help you?”

The girls giggle in unison, which in Mulan’s experience is a bad sign. “We were just wondering,” says Geraldine. The girls giggle some more, but Mulan waits patiently. “We were just wondering who your love is?” They look up at her with three sets of shining eyes. 

“That is a very private thing to ask someone,” she responds, but gently. Children are so easy to wound with words. “Perhaps it hurts me to speak of it.”

“Oh,” says Mathilde. “Why?”

“It is unrequited. Do you understand what that means?” 

Three heads shake back and forth.

“It means the person I love does not love me in return. This happens sometimes,” Mulan explains.

“Agnes wanted Thomas the woodcutter’s son to bring her flowers but he didn’t want to,” says Mathilde, earning a pinch from Agnes.

“Sometimes love is painful,” Mulan says truthfully. “But you must not worry about that for many years. It is only when you are older that it hurts.”

The girls make disgusted faces. “Then why do grownups make such a fuss about true love?” asks Geraldine.

Quite without meaning to, Mulan calls to mind one of her favorite but most bittersweet memories of Aurora, from before they rescued Phillip. “When you find your true love, it is as though every day before you were asleep, and every day after you are awake to experience the world in all its colors and sounds and smells,” she says, almost to herself.

The girls sigh in unison. “I don’t see why your love wouldn’t love you back,” says Mathilde boldly. “You’re very pretty, and everyone says you’re the best soldier in the realm, and—” She stops with a blush. “Anyway, I’m sorry your love is unrequited.” She pronounces the word carefully to make sure she gets it right.

“Thank you Mathilde,” says Mulan. She imitates the tone of voice Robin was wont to use when he wanted to end a discussion with Roland, and it works. The girls start to run off, but Mathilde slows down just long enough to get in the last word.

“I hope you find someone who loves you back,” she offers, then catches up to her friends.

“Thank you,” Mulan says again. When the children have gone, she leans against the cold stone wall and simply breathes for a few minutes, long enough for her heart to stop feeling so weak.

*

Mulan’s most cherished memory of Aurora is this: Some weeks before they cornered the wraith that took Phillip’s soul, they stumbled onto a small village in the midst of a wedding celebration. They were tired, badly in need of supplies, and so they decided to overnight in the village. The store owner with whom they traded for food invited them to join the festivities; the bride was the daughter of a prominent village elder and it was a holiday. 

Mulan was tired but seeing Aurora grow excited at the thought of a party and good company after weeks of slogging through mud and thick underbrush was enough. She agreed to come along and they were both promptly dragged to the feast, where there was dancing and drinking aplenty. Somewhere between a whole boar being served and the flute and drum beginning, Aurora found a garland of flowers. Their white petals formed soft, round accents in hair burnished by firelight. 

She brought Mulan a cup of wine, slightly too sweet and very strong, and another garland. Mulan could no more wave her off than she could deny Aurora this happiness, so she accepted the flowers. They watched the dancers until Aurora could contain herself no longer and she stepped into a circle of young women who welcomed her and showed her how to step lightly in time with the music. She was unsure at first, but within a few songs grew gracefully assured, and then weaved her way back to Mulan who had never stopped watching her. 

She beckoned Mulan to dance and Mulan found herself getting to her feet, slipping her wiry and calloused hand into Aurora’s soft one. Her muscles were loose with wine, her mind soft and receptive to being led. Aurora showed her the steps and she followed with the ease of one long accustomed to learning movement. They danced for what felt like hours, until the fire began to turn to embers and most of the revelers wandered back to their homes. Somehow they wound up leaning against a bale of hay by the fire and Aurora fell asleep against Mulan’s shoulder, still joined at the hands. Mulan laid her head against Aurora’s until dawn, intending to slip away in the early morning light but unwilling to disentangle herself. She fell asleep too, and when they woke together they did not speak of how Aurora’s head came to rest in Mulan’s lap.

Mulan threw away her wilted garland, but she found Aurora’s a month later, when they were unpacking their travel bags at the palace. Aurora had pressed and saved it.

*

After a week of consulting with Mira, Aurora summons Mulan to her study. This is where she likes to read, rather than the palace’s large and somewhat imposing library. Her study has good light and comfortable stuffed chairs, as well as a delicately carved table that she uses for drawing or writing letters. Today there is a sketch of a cloaked figure in motion on top, which Mulan only glimpses before Aurora sweeps up the stack and tamps it down to straighten it out. 

“Where is Mira?” asks Mulan.

“Taking a break,” says Aurora, her back to Mulan while she busies herself with putting away her papers. “I wanted to speak with you.”

Mulan watches Aurora storm back and forth, today clad in a simple yellow dress trimmed in white. She is over two-thirds through her pregnancy now and, to Mulan, growing more achingly beautiful by the day. 

“I’ve heard a rumor going around the palace,” Aurora continues, still with her back turned. “My handmaidens won’t stop talking about it. I—” She finally faces Mulan and her mouth freezes on whatever word was meant to come out next, shattering and reforming in a worried cry. “Mulan! What happened to your face?”

Mulan’s hand makes an abortive motion towards her left eye, which she knows is still purple all down to her cheekbone. A vicious hit from one of her lieutenants, of whom she is quite proud for getting in past her guard. “A training accident,” she says, dismissing it with the same hand. 

Aurora is having none of it, already scanning Mulan for other injuries. She is practiced at it, though they have fallen out of the habit of being automatically in tune with the other as they were on the road. “Your leg. You’re not putting weight on it.”

Almost defiantly, Mulan redistributes her weight to stand more fully on her left leg. That one was a numbing sideways strike, unblockable as she fought off two others on her right. It costs her a wince, though, which Aurora catches immediately. 

“Mulan!” she says, half accusation and half worried question. She ignores any resistance and pushes Mulan down into a chair. “Where else?” she demands.

Mulan knows better than to lie when Aurora is like this. “My ribs,” she mutters. 

“Show me.” Her tone brooks no argument.

Slowly, stiffly, Mulan unbuckles her belt. Then her padded armor comes over her head, and she’s left in her plain undertunic, tucked neatly into her pants. She pulls it out of her waistband and up, just far enough to reveal the handspan of green and yellow stain splashed along her ribcage to a kneeling Aurora. Her fingertips prod, making Mulan gasp, but not at the pain. Aurora has not touched her in months, a staggering reversal for a woman who once let Mulan hold her heart. 

“Sorry,” Aurora says in a near whisper, and her fingers slow and gentle until they’re barely grazing Mulan’s skin. Mulan focuses on her breathing while Aurora takes her time, tracing the outline of the bruise in its vague boot heel shape. “Does it hurt much now?”

Mulan looks away, at a point on the far wall. “No.”

Aurora’s entire hand settles onto Mulan’s stomach, cool to the touch. “Does this hurt?”

Her heart is surely so loud that Aurora can hear it. “No.”

Aurora can’t seem to tear her eyes from the bruise. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You’ve given so much and I—I can’t give you anything.” Her hand does not withdraw, instead drifting diagonally to Mulan’s waist.

“You don’t have to give me anything. I don’t want anything from you,” says Mulan, desperate to stop and completely, utterly unable to do so. Aurora’s hand is warming to her skin, tickling a little as it slides around to her back.

“Liar,” says Aurora.

Mulan’s eyes flick down at last, and see how Aurora is watching her, drinking her in like one with a terrible thirst. Her breath heaves in her lungs, sending a wave of motion under Aurora’s hand. “I did not lie to you. I have never lied to you.”

“You’re lying to me about how this happened to you.” Aurora squeezes, just at the edge of the bruise. 

Mulan flinches. “It was a training accident. Princess, please.”

Aurora’s hand stills. “Please what?”

It could all unravel at this moment. Mulan could touch Aurora with trembling hands, could press their lips together, and be welcomed for it. She could nose along Aurora’s jawline to the softness of her neck, stipple little kisses down the slope of her shoulder. She could pull Aurora into her lap and feel her solid weight, her thighs still strong from travel. She could have this, just for a little while. 

“Please stop,” says Mulan. “You’re hurting me.”

Aurora pulls her hand away immediately. “Mulan, I…” She’s breathless, though she has only been kneeling on the floor. 

Mulan’s shirt drops and her armor buckles into place with the quickness of muscle memory. Her voice is the calm, polite tone she has cultivated for dealing with Aurora since she confessed all. “You wanted to speak with me, princess?” 

“I—yes. But Mulan—” Aurora seems mortified by what has just happened. She beseeches Mulan with her eyes, with the way she tilts her face up just so.

Mulan breaks, just enough to stop Aurora from making a mistake. “It’s all right,” she says, reassuring and mild. “Nothing has changed.”

Aurora stands, and gathers her dignity about her in the proud way of royalty. “No, I suppose it hasn’t. Good day, captain.” Her voice falters on Mulan’s rank, the last syllable trapped hoarsely in her throat.

“Good day, princess Aurora,” says Mulan. She makes a slight bow. When she leaves, she nearly bumps into a chamber maid just outside the door. By the time she thinks to ask the maid how long she was there, it is far too late.

*

At first it’s just sideways glance, a few whispers, curious stares. Mulan, who has never cared for gossip and usually pays it no mind, is oblivious to it until a blushing servant drops a tray of tea right in front of her. “I’m so sorry,” she says, attempting to gather everything up with shaking hands.

“No harm has been done,” says Mulan, kneeling down to help her. She tries to pile up the shards neatly while avoiding the sodden mess of cloth napkins and tea cakes on the floor. She notices the servant’s hands. “Are you all right?”

The servant doesn’t quite manage to look at Mulan. “I’m fine. Please, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“I am unbothered,” says Mulan, attempting to be humorous to put the woman at ease. 

She only starts stammering, hands fiddling with her tray of broken teacups. “You’re very kind.”

“It was nothing. Please, do not feel ill at ease about it.” Mulan tries a smile. Aurora was always telling her she should try smiling before intimidating when they traveled together.

The servant seems to gather up her courage at last. “Captain, is it true you’re in love with the princess?” she asks.

Were she the one holding the tray, she would have dropped it. As it is, Mulan’s entire body stiffens into ice. “Excuse me?” 

“I—It’s nothing. I’m sorry.” The servant tries to scuttle away but Mulan is too fast. Her hand darts out and fastens on the servant’s elbow. 

“That is gossip. Whoever told you that lied,” says Mulan, so fiercely she gives the lie to her own words. “And even if I did, Princess Aurora is true to Prince Phillip. Anyone who suggests otherwise besmirches her honor. Let that be known to whoever would speak falsely.”

“Of course,” says the servant, now frightened enough to try to tug free. 

Mulan realizes how hard she is gripping the poor woman’s arm and lets go immediately. “I’m sorry.” She backs up, trying to make herself unthreatening. “I meant you no harm.”

But the servant only has the nerve to nod once, her body dipping oddly as if she wants to curtsey, before she scurries away. 

Mulan is torn between fuming over this invasion of her privacy and terror that people might figure out what lurks in her heart. She wrings her hands, trying to assemble a plan of attack. She needs more information—and, with grim realization, she knows where to get it.

*

“Captain Mulan!” says Mathilde brightly upon seeing her hero enter the chamber where she and the other castle girls are at sewing, no doubt training to follow in their mothers’ footsteps.

“Please, do not let me interrupt,” Mulan tells the children, all looking expectantly at her. “Mathilde, may I speak with you for a moment?”

Mathilde happily casts aside the pants she was mending and follows Mulan outside. Agnes and Geraldine follow of their own volition. Mulan considers asking them to leave but they might as well be present for this since they could also have the knowledge she needs, and in any case, she has seen enough of their little unit to know they will divulge all to each other anyway.

“What have you heard around the palace about me and Princess Aurora?” Mulan asks, keeping it direct.

The girls titter in unison. 

“So it is true!” says Agnes.

“What is?”

“You’re in love with the princess,” says Geraldine.

“She is your unrequited love,” Mathilde adds.

Mulan wishes she had never found that damned fairy. “People are speaking openly of this?” 

“It’s the _only_ thing anyone is talking about,” Mathilde confirms. She clasps her hands in front of her chest. “It’s so sad and romantic. Will you try to win her heart?” 

“What? Of course not!” says Mulan. “Why would you think that? Princess Aurora and Prince Phillip are each other’s true loves.”

“But Princess Aurora is your true love,” Mathilde argues stubbornly. “That’s not fair.”

“Has the princess heard any of this?”

Agnes looks off to the side and Mulan knows instantly. “Agnes,” she says, commanding the child’s attention. “Did you tell your mother any of the things we spoke about?”

Agnes looks down at her feet. “Yes.”

Resignation is quick on the heels of Mulan’s panic. Her next course of action is very clear. To the children, she gives a rare smile. “Very well. Thank you all for speaking with me.” 

“What’s going to happen now?” asks Mathilde.

“Now you will return to your work, and I will return to mine,” says Mulan. Agnes and Geraldine slink off but Mathilde is resistant, wanting more than to be dismissed. Mulan rests her hand on the girl’s small shoulder. “Thank you Mathilde. You have been a good friend to me.”

With a child’s intuition that things are changing, Mathilde throws herself into a hug, arms wrapping around Mulan’s waist. “Thank you Captain Mulan. I think you’re a good friend too.”

“Mathilde,” says Mulan, wanting to give her a parting treat. She will likely never see the girl again. “Have you ever held a sword before?”

*

She reports to Philip’s war room without being summoned. Phillip is waiting, seated at the head of the immense oak table in the middle of the room. He looks rumpled and sick with anger. Mulan stops a very formal ten paces from him and stands at parade rest.

“So. You’ve come to see me at last,” says Phillip, staring down at the table, which is still covered in medical treatises and research.

“With your permission, I am leaving the palace,” says Mulan. She, too, does not look at Phillip, staring instead at some point in the middle distance like any soldier being reprimanded.

“Why leave now? Just when you’ve brought the solution to all our problems. A fairy who can grant your heart’s desire.” It comes out like an accusation, not a statement of fact.

“Mira is here to grant Aurora’s wish, not mine,” says Mulan. “I will continue to search for a cure.”

“A cure.” Phillip snorts. “Tell me truly, these dreams your ancestors sent you—did you truly have them, or was it all a ruse?”

Mulan blanches. She has never heard Phillip so bleak, so harsh. “A ruse to what end? I swear to you they are real.”

“You swear to me,” Phillip says, nodding his head mockingly. “You swear. Your loyalty? Did you swear that to me?”

“You know I did,” says Mulan, voice low, trying to keep Phillip calm.

“How can you stand there, you with your _honor_ —” He spits it, as though the concept is so filthy he cannot bear to say it aloud. “And you dare speak of loyalty.”

“I have never betrayed you,” Mulan says steadily. “And if you believe I ever would, then perhaps you should not speak of my honor.”

Phillip’s hands clench into fists on the table. “You have my permission to leave. Gather your supplies and go.” Still, he will not look at her.

Mulan clicks her heels and bows formally, one hand on her hilt and the other neatly sweeping her cape around. “Phillip,” she says at the door. “Do not stop looking. Aurora’s life depends on it.”

“That is my concern and not yours,” he says coldly, as swift and sure a strike at her as any enemy has ever landed. 

She struggles with the urge to go back and beat Phillip about the head and neck until he sees reason. But she also feels the months and months of guilt pressing down on her. She doesn’t know why she ever thought she could live like this. “If you have need of me,” she says, words echoing another lifetime, “I will come.”

*

It doesn’t take long to gather her personal belongings. There is not much she desires to take with her from the castle except the necessities for questing. Her spare clothes, her mother’s hair comb, some blankets, a small book of poetry Aurora once lent her—that does it for her bedchamber. A recurve bow, a full quiver, a spare dagger, extra bowstrings, and a whetstone from the armory. Sundries for hunting, camping, and cooking from general stores, and two saddlebags of food from the kitchens. Then she is saddling her favorite horse, turning her mind towards the open road and away from her home. It has been a wet, humid spring and the going will not be pleasant.

As she cinches the girth straps, she hears a rustle of sawdust and hay and Aurora is there in the stall with her. “Mulan,” she says, somehow turning her name into an apology and a plea all together.

“I will return for the birth of your child if I can,” says Mulan, focusing on making sure the crupper is not chafing. 

“Please don’t go,” says Aurora. “Phillip is just confused. He doesn’t really want you to leave.”

“I have chosen to leave,” says Mulan.

“No, you’re running,” Aurora snaps. “The brave thing would be to stay and figure this mess out.”

Mulan clenches her jaw. “There is nothing to figure out. You love Phillip. Phillip loves you. I have a duty to you both that requires me to leave.”

“Duty!” Aurora repeats like an epithet. The resounding indignation coming from Aurora would be amusing any other time; Mulan used to love to tease her just enough to spark her ire, short of a full blaze. Today it is simply another obstacle in her path. “Duty is an excuse. Mulan, you told me you loved me. You don’t get to leave and say it’s your duty.”

Mulan is gripping one of her stirrups so hard that the leather of her gloves creaks. “I do love you. But I love Phillip too, and I have hurt him badly.”

“Phillip is always calling you his sister,” says Aurora. “Family forgives. Just stay, and he’ll stop overreacting.”

Mulan continues to adjust her saddle. 

“Mulan!” This time Aurora marches forward and grabs Mulan’s arm, pushing to spin her around. “Don’t you dare leave. I _order_ you to stay.”

Mulan resists every instinct to fight back against being manhandled so. “No.”

“Then you do not love me,” says Aurora, in such a tone that Phillip’s was as the sun compared to her howling chill. 

“I will love you for the rest of my days,” says Mulan, as she might recite any fact. She does not avoid Aurora’s eyes as she did Phillip. She drinks in her fill of Aurora and adds it to her provisions. 

“I don’t want you to leave.” Aurora’s voice is losing all its strength, fading into a sad denial of impending reality. “I—”

Mulan’s heart nearly yanks her forward by the strength of its hammering at what she sees on Aurora’s face. “Please do not say something you cannot take back if it is only to keep me from leaving,” she pleads. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Something in Aurora gives way, just long enough for Mulan to break free and mount her horse in one smooth movement. “Wish for health and happiness,” she says. “If you are healthy and happy, so am I.” She snaps the reins, ducks the entrance to the stables, and is commanding the gate be opened before Aurora has a chance to reply. As soon as she is clear, she puts her heels to the horse and lets him carry the burden of her sorrow as fast as he can from her home.


	3. Chapter 3

She at least has a destination in mind. Assuming his camp is still in the same general location, Robin Hood is a few days' ride away. The time passes in a monotonous blur, rising at dawn and riding until dark and ignoring the churning in her gut. It is barely moonrise when she arrives at the borders of what she once knew to be Robin’s territory and she begins to watch for signs of his sentries. They come soon enough, branches creaking and rustling to give away their arrival.

“Halt,” says a voice that Mulan knows well after hearing it sing florid ballad after ballad.

“Will Scarlett,” says Mulan. “I am a friend of Robin’s. Please tell him Mulan has come to see him.”

Choked surprise comes from overhead and Mulan smiles to herself; Will’s lack of self-control, at least, is the same.

Robin himself appears out of the underbrush like the master woodsman he is some minutes later. “Now this is a pleasant surprise,” he says. “I did not expect to see you again after so much time.”

“I must ask you a favor,” says Mulan, dismounting to grasp Robin’s hand.

“Of course, anything I am able to provide,” Robin says magnanimously. Subtle nods from him send the sentries back to the borders and he leads Mulan back to camp proper. She sees all the familiar faces around the fire and if she could not be with Aurora, at least she is among good company now. 

“I seek your leave to search Rumpelstiltskin’s castle,” says Mulan. “There may be something there I can use to help a friend in need.”

“Of course,” says Robin. “Perhaps I can help? What is it you’re looking for?”

Mulan makes a wry face. “I do not know yet.”

Robin shrugs, taking it all in stride. “Well in any case, we can get you fed and find you a place to sleep.”

He fetches her a hammock and she strings it up from memory close to the tree she knows Will favors. Annoying though he was the last time she was here, he was at least amusing. She could use some amusement in her life. She sleeps fitfully and refuses to cry.

*

Mira finds her several days later. She’s only skimmed the surface of the things left behind in the castle, and there are troves yet untouched for her to discover, such is the lasting fear of the Dark One in these lands. She could be working for a long, long time. She has her cloak and gloves off, sword very near at hand while she trudges through yet another rather grim book of dark magic, when she hears the telltale shimmer of Mira’s wings.

Sure enough, a wavy ribbon of light weaves in through the nearest open window to end in Mira hovering just in front of Mulan. “There you are!”

“Why have you come?” Mulan asks, secretly glad to have a reason to shove away her book. 

“To apologize.” Mira pops into her human form, somewhat shamefaced. “I’m sorry I was so indiscreet. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t opened my mouth.”

Mulan’s first ungenerous thought is how much she agrees with Mira, but she cannot find it in her to be so cruel. She was slowly drowning at the palace and now she can breathe again, even if she can only inhale with pain. “You’re too hard on yourself. And anyway if I hadn’t found you, you couldn’t grant Aurora her wish.”

“That’s the other thing,” says Mira, a little more delicately. She sits down at the heavy table cattycorner to Mulan. “I can’t.”

Mulan frowns. “What do you mean you can’t? I thought you had fairy dust.”

“It’s not that,” says Mira, puffing at a lock of hair hanging in her eye. “We can’t work out her wish. She’s all….muddled.”

“Muddled,” Mulan repeats, not understanding at all. Why can’t it ever be easy with magic?

“For a wish to really be effective, it has to have a driving, singular emotion behind it. Purity of heart.”

Mulan bristles. “Aurora’s heart is true.”

“Oh stop it,” says Mira, completely unintimidated. “True of heart, absolutely. But that girl doesn’t know what she wants.”

Mulan wants to throw down her work, jump on her horse, and ride at a gallop back to the palace, but instead she tenses in her chair. “She wants her child to be born safely, of course.”

Mira blows the same lock of hair out of her eye, this time with such force that it explodes into floating strands. “Are you always this dense on purpose?” 

“She chose Phillip,” Mulan says stubbornly. “To interfere would be dishonorable.”

“Ugghhh I’ve heard enough about your honor,” says Mira, sliding her arms onto the table so she can thump her head into them. “Phillip kept yelling about it and Aurora won’t stop talking about it. We get it. You’re full of honor. Everyone gets some honor.”

Mulan really does bristle at that; if Mira were upright to see it she might scoot her chair back. “Some days honor is all I have left.”

Mira suddenly does bolt upright, oblivious to the dark look on Mulan’s face. “That’s it! We’ve been approaching this all wrong.” She grabs Mulan’s hand, shaking it emphatically. “I’m supposed to grant your wish, not Aurora’s.”

Mulan opens her mouth to respond but Mira is on a roll.

“Yes, that’s why Aurora’s wish wasn’t working. Because I was supposed to be granting yours all along. Hah! If Blue could see me now…” Mira pops back into her fairy form, which Mulan actually finds much more disconcerting than the reverse, and does a loop-the-loop. “This is fantastic, Mulan! This is why it hasn’t been working with Aurora!”

“I thought a fairy could grant anyone’s wish?” asks Mulan.

“Haven’t you been listening? It’s more complicated than that,” says Mira. “This whole time I’ve been working with Aurora trying to figure out her deepest desire and you’ve been sitting right in front of me.”

*

As it turns out, it is devilishly hard to outrun a fairy. They’re small but fast, and extremely agile. Mulan doesn’t even bother going out the front, instead dropping out of the window from the second storey, rolling into a tuck, and stalking back towards Robin’s camp.

“Was it something I said?” asks Mira, buzzing insistently. Mulan squelches a growing urge to swat at her.

“Return to Aurora. I am fine here.”

Mira floats backwards in front of her. “Mulan, I told you, you’re the one who needs to make a wish, not her. She doesn’t know what she wants, but you do.”

“I want—”

Mira abruptly goes full-size; Mulan barges directly into her and they go down in a yelling, snarling tangle. Mulan rights herself first and grapples Mira to the ground, pinning her solidly. “Enough!” she says.

Mira goes fairy, letting Mulan flop forward onto the suddenly empty ground. “No! Not until you make a wish.”

“Fight me as fairy or woman, but choose one!” Mulan yells, whirling to try to find Mira in the air.

“Make a wish!”

“Fight honorably!”

“Wish!”

“Mira!”

“ _Wish!_ ”

Mulan does.

*

Nothing happens.

But then Mira shivers, throwing off a little shower of sparkles. “Oooh, that was a good wish. If I could only grant one, that would’ve passed Blue’s test for sure.”

Mulan barely refrains from snatching her out of midair and shaking her like a salt shaker. “Nothing happened.”

“Not that you noticed anyway,” Mira says primly, smoothing down her fairy garb with the sound of bells tinkling. If it were possible for bells to be smug, hers would be. “But it’s good to know all that talk about Aurora was true.”

“Mira,” Mulan says slowly, “Are you saying the wish worked?”

“Oh yes.” Mira shivers again. “Trust me. You really went for it.”

“But—”

“It worked! _Trust me._ I wouldn’t lie about something this important.” Mira makes a self-satisfied face. “I’m going to find more fairy dust.”

Mulan tries to keep in her place, needing more answers. “Mira—”

But she is gone already, shooting away in an arc of light with enviable speed. Mulan rolls her eyes heavenward, as if to implore her ancestors save her from flighty fairies with something to prove. Then she trudges the rest of the way back to camp with her wish twisting her in stomach, telling her where her feet must carry her next. 

“Oh dear,” says Robin upon seeing her face. He is stewing something serviceable-looking in the pot over the cookfire, making faces when the odd objectionable odor wafts up.

“I must take my leave,” Mulan says formally. She wonders if it is always inevitable that she will have to return to Aurora, no matter where she runs or why. 

Robin seems as though he wants to protest, or at least ask for a reason, but the thundercloud that is Mulan’s face dissuades him. He tips his head. “You know you are always welcome here, friend.” They shake hands, and Mulan feels a little better knowing that she has an ally such as Robin. He, at least, has no beautiful consort with whom she can become besotted only to ruin all their friendships. 

Similarly dark thoughts plague her all the way back to Phillip and Aurora’s borders.

*

It hasn’t been so long that the patrols don’t recognize her; she’s only been gone a week. Still, her reception is admittedly frosty and it galls her that these men and women who she trained, who she shaped and pushed and grew, would treat her like a stranger. She remains unforgiven, then.

A squad of four soldiers escorts her through the palace to the main hall, where Phillip is seated on the throne for a formal reception. But for the guards, no one else is present. Mulan is glad no courtiers or servants are about to witness this confrontation.

“Fa Mulan,” Phillip says, something strangling his voice to half-strength. He looks at her with such profound anger in his eyes that she knows her wound has been festering in him all this time instead of healing. 

She gives him a formal bow. “Prince Phillip.”

“Why have you returned?”

Mulan draws herself up, standing tall in the absence of feeling so. She projects the aura of a confident warrior like a muscle memory, trusting her training to carry through the day. “I seek an audience with yourself and the Princess Aurora.”

“Denied,” Phillip says flatly. “You may rest and replenish your supplies, then take your leave of us.”

There’s a clattering sound, a clamor of two voices in heated argument, then a side door flies open to reveal Aurora followed closely by a guard. All attention in the hall turns towards her. “You came back,” she says.

Mulan does not reply, frozen at the sight of Aurora though Aurora is precisely who she came to see. It seems impossible that she could have changed so much in just a week, but Mulan can see how her child has grown.

Aurora whips her gaze at Phillip. “And why didn’t anyone tell me Captain Mulan was here?”

Phillip has the decency to look a little ashamed, but will not back down. “This need not bother you.”

“Anything that concerns me is my business.” Aurora takes a moment to look back and forth between Phillip and Aurora, her fiancé and her long-time protector. “I’ve had lunch set in our chambers. I expect to see both of you up there.” She sweeps out, every inch the ruler of the castle.

For a moment, Phillip and Mulan are united in their helplessness in the face of Aurora’s will. They exchange looks and Mulan can see her friend underneath the haze of resentment, the one whose face says _we’d better just do what she says, you know how she gets_ before closing off to her again. 

After a lengthy, awkward climb upstairs, they file into the outer room of the royal chambers where lunch is waiting as promised and Aurora is standing at the window. She ends her contemplation of the greening forest beyond the castle to turn towards the two penitents at her door. “Sit,” she commands them, and they slide into chairs on opposite sides of the table. Between them are dishes of venison and some kind of barley soup with vegetables, as well as a large carafe of wine. 

“Aurora—” Phillip begins at the same time as Mulan ventures a hesitant “Princess—”

“I’ll be in the library,” says Aurora. “You two can stay here and talk. Find me when you stop being foolish.” For the second time in five minutes she leaves them alone with each other, trying to catch up with her plans.

“I need a drink,” Phillip mutters when the chamber door is shut. He pours out a substantial cup of wine, then a second one without being asked. He pushes the second very full cup at Mulan. 

Mulan watches him tip the cup back until it is nearly empty, leaving hers untouched. “I came today to tell you I made a wish.”

“Oh,” says Phillip dully, refilling his cup. 

“Mira came to me and—well, I made a wish.” Mulan sees no reason to describe the farce that was her fight with Mira. “And I have reason to believe that Aurora’s pregnancy will be safe now. She’s safe.”

Phillip’s hand clenches tight around his drink, fingers turning from red to white. “Faithful Mulan, eh? Always does her duty. Always finds a way.”

“For the ones I love,” Mulan replies, anger beginning to glow in her belly. “Which you will recall includes you.”

“You don’t betray your loved ones,” Phillip says over the rim of his cup. 

“I was not honest with you about my feelings. But I never betrayed you, and neither did Aurora,” says Mulan. “Be angry with me if you must, but do you have so little faith in your own true love?”

Phillip dashes his cup into the fire, wine splattering across stone and hissing in the flames. “Yes!” he shouts.

Mulan jerks back in her chair.

“Because I’m not her true love. I never was. And I felt it, these long months, I _felt_ that it was wrong but I was happy too and I thought that it was enough to be starting a family. But then you, I finally saw how you look at her and I knew and it was worse because it was you. You were _my_ friend first. You were supposed to be my friend—” Abruptly, he puts his head in his hands and weeps. His tears are silent but plentiful, flowing over his fingers and down to his wrists where they soak his cuffs. 

Mulan is hardly dry-eyed either but she refuses to allow herself even the small privacy of covering her tears. “I am your friend. But I can’t help how I feel. I’ve tried. It was no good.”

Phillip continues to cry, but with the air of one bringing himself under control. He shudders under the force of a long, steadying breath and lowers his hands. Though his face is puffy and his cheeks still wet, in it is the noble countenance of Mulan’s old friend instead of the jealous lover. “I knew also that you never touched Aurora,” he says. “But it was easier to be angry with you than to accept—” A twist of his mouth before he regains control. “—to accept the truth. Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” says Mulan. “I—” She stumbles over what Phillip has just revealed to her. “It is I who must ask you to forgive me. I lied to you.”

Phillip sniffs, stemming more tears. “Yes. You did. But I think we were all lying to each other.”

At last Mulan sips her wine, finding her mouth rough and dry. The wine is quite rich, unwatered, and redolent of the plums grown at the western edge of the kingdom. She pulls another cup from the end of the table and fills it for Phillip and together they break bread and drink.

*

Aurora finds them an hour later very, very drunk. Phillip is crying again but this time with Mulan sitting next to him, a comforting arm around his shoulders and a few tears shining on her cheeks too. “Should I come back later?” she asks.

“No,” says Mulan, standing up quickly, though she keeps one hand on Phillip’s shoulder while he scrubs a sleeve across his eyes. “I take my leave of you.”

“Mulan—” Aurora’s eyes go wide at the thought that she would leave so quickly, and in this condition.

“To my quarters. If they are still available.” Mulan pats Phillip, leaning just a little to the left.

“Yes, of course,” says Aurora, moving aside to let Mulan leave. Before she can, Phillip tugs on her hand, leveraging himself into a standing position. He pulls her into a full-body hug and, much to Aurora’s surprise, Mulan collapses into it. They pound each other on the back in a comradely fashion before Mulan walks very carefully to the door. 

“Princess,” Mulan says crisply. She bumps into the edge of the frame, pauses to get her bearings, and then marches away like someone who knows exactly how she drunk she is. 

“Aurora,” says Phillip before Mulan is entirely out of earshot, using what she knows he considers his most commanding, manly voice. “We need to talk.”

*

Mulan lies in bed, the ceiling spinning above her. She has no head for wine yet she quaffed more than her fair share of it tonight with Phillip. They both needed it, and the release of total honesty that accompanied. The confrontation was like a good scouring and now she feels clean, if empty. In the other timeline, she came to love the gentle sway of hammocks and the natural sounds of the forest, but tonight she finds the castle a comfort. The steady pace of the guards on patrol, the odd creak of settling foundations, even the breeze whispering against her windows; these are the sounds of home. 

Just as she’s contemplating making a move for the water pitcher by her bed, there comes a light tapping at her door. Her instinct is to go for the dagger under her pillow but there are only two people in this castle who have any business with her now, and one of them is doubtless sleeping off the five or six—or was it seven?—cups of wine in his belly. “Enter,” Mulan says, just loud enough for someone with their ear pressed to the door to hear.

It swings in, revealing a dull sliver of torchlight from the corridor, then Aurora is silhouetted there. “I hope I didn’t wake you,” she whispers.

“I was still awake,” Mulan says, her head clearing by the second. 

Aurora comes in without being invited and presses the door silently back into its frame. The moon is waxing and Mulan’s chambers are nearly too dark to see; she hadn’t bothered with candles when she stumbled in, just toed off her boots and pulled off her armor before falling into bed. Aurora is a dark flutter, the barest glint of jewelry at her throat giving her away. “I’m glad you and Phillip made up,” she says.

“So am I.” 

“Why did you come back?”

Mulan pushes herself up, ignoring how it makes her brain seem to lurch forward inside her skull, and props herself against the pillows. “Mira came to see me. I made a wish. It was about you.”

“Oh.” The necklace winks, moving with the rhythm of Aurora’s breathing. She is breathing faster. “What did you wish?”

Mulan watches her, thinking about what Phillip admitted, but not daring to believe it. “For you.”

Aurora’s inhaled breath is a sharp stab of hope.

“For your child,” Mulan fumbles. “For the both of you.”

“Oh.”

“Did you—did you not feel anything?” 

“Did you?”

Mulan slides her legs out of the bed, sitting now on the edge with her legs hanging. Her face starts to crumble but she smoothes it out through force of will. “No,” she exhales. “I have only Mira’s word that it worked, but she seemed most assured. I believe her.”

Aurora slowly emerges from the deep shadows, coming to a stop in a pool of moonlight. “Mulan, what was the wish?”

Now is the time for resolve so Mulan reaches for steel in her mind, her spine straightening reflexively. The words that come out are like those of a soldier answering her commanding officer. “That when the time comes, you and your child would not die, and if a life must be taken, that it would be mine.”

Aurora comes to her then, pale white hand reaching out for Mulan’s cheek. She stops at the edge of the bed, between Mulan’s legs, and her head drops until they’re touching foreheads. “Why?”

“Magic comes with a price.”

“I never wanted that,” says Aurora with her eyes closed. “You must know I would never ask you to do that.”

“It was my choice,” Mulan says stubbornly. The last time they touched was agony but this time, with wine in her blood and exhaustion dogging her footsteps she gives in. She leans into the touch, into the way Aurora smoothes her thumb across Mulan’s temple in a steady, soothing rhythm. Their thighs brush, but Mulan doesn’t flinch away as she once might have. She squeezes gently, keeping Aurora in place so she can slide both hands around her waist. Aurora’s left hand is still on her cheek; her right drifts up, over Mulan’s heart, and lands feather-light. Mulan can feel how warm her hands are through her cotton undershirt and the fabric is both too much and not enough at the same time.

“If, not when. Nothing might happen at all,” Aurora surmises. 

Mulan just nods.

“Will you stay?” 

“Yes.”

“And will you still promise not to expect anything from me?”

Mulan recalls the promise, made long months ago at the end of the most taxing quest of her life. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

“I don’t know either,” says Aurora. “I still feel things for Phillip but when I’m around you—and when you’re gone I can’t—” She tilts her head, bringing their mouths closer, barely holding herself back. 

Mulan feels Aurora’s warm breath on her lips but can’t seem to breathe herself. “You can’t?”

“I can’t sleep. I worry. I’m distracted until you come back.” The hand on Mulan’s chest flexes, Aurora’s fingertips digging into her skin, as though she wants to sink through Mulan’s flesh to the beating pulse beneath. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Aurora murmurs against her mouth, words turning into a kiss so seamlessly that Mulan isn’t sure where one stopped and the other began. Her hands tighten on Aurora’s waist without thinking and Aurora slips from her heart to her neck, grasping there to tilt Mulan’s head back. Mulan’s mouth opens, taking Aurora in, tasting her for the first time. 

And then she stops, scooting back on the bed far enough to put a few inches between them. The cost in effort is enormous and still she does it, because Phillip is her friend and everything is so fragile. “Perhaps we should speak in the morning, when things are clearer,” she suggests.

The darkness cannot hide Aurora’s disappointment, but she accedes anyway with a sigh. “You’re right.” A last, lingering touch tracing down Mulan’s jawline. 

“Good night, princess,” Mulan says.

“Good night, captain.” 

A quick bloom of torchlight, then darkness, and Mulan is alone again. This time when she lies down her head is spinning for entirely different reasons. Tomorrow will be very interesting.

*

If life in the castle was awkward pre-wish, post-wish it is doubly so. Were it not for Mulan and Phillip’s dogged dedication to their friendship and their mutual agreement never to be in the same room with Aurora at the same time, Mulan might have left again. But there also hangs over their heads the knowledge that Mulan’s time might be limited. So she stays and slips back into her old routines. The children are delighted to see her again, assuming she was away on some dashing adventure. Some of the soldiers are stiff in her presence, but with Phillip publicly declaring the kingdom is safer for her presence, they have no choice but to accept her. And perhaps knowing that she could best any of them in single combat helps, but she will not bully obedience out of anyone. She begins to discreetly train possible replacements, increasing the responsibilities of her best lieutenants.

As for Aurora, she is simply there where before she was absent. She eats breakfast with Mulan each morning, requests Mulan’s presence at her side for several hours each day, and bids Mulan good night at her door. The rumors are so thick they must practically wade through them each day, but Mulan insists her wish remain a secret. She finds she does not care who whispers behind her back when Aurora is beside her smiling at her, letting their hands brush, telling her stories of growing up, listening to Mulan’s childhood stories in return. 

But they don’t kiss. Not since the first time, the only time. It is disrespectful to Phillip and in any case, Aurora has confessed to both of them that she is still confused. Mulan supposes anyone might be, after growing up believing she would be awoken by her true love and they would live happily ever after. Mulan was no one’s prophecy, but a quirk of fate, and now here she is all tangled up in a love that was never supposed to be this complicated.

Every few days, Aurora brings up what she wants to do after the baby is born. She has convinced herself that everything will be fine and Mulan cannot persuade her to prepare for the worst so she plays along. 

“You could be my consort,” Aurora teases her. It’s one of those moments where they’ve already been talking at length and Aurora is comfortable enough to acknowledge the nebulous thing between them. “Princesses aren’t supposed to have consorts but I don’t see why a man should be allowed but a woman isn’t.”

Mulan’s disdainful look makes Aurora laugh gaily. “Of course not, Mulan. Can you even imagine the gossip. The servants would never get any work done.”

Other times she is serious, refusing to consider the very real possibility that Mulan is going to die. “Would you want to leave after the baby is born?” she asks. “Would you want me to come with you?”

“Wherever you are, that is where I will make my home,” Mulan answers honestly even though she considers it a moot point. Imminent death, she finds, is a great motivator to eliminate all dissembling and cut swiftly to the truth.

Aurora blushes because though she has been told all her life she is beautiful, this is Mulan, who would rather fight off a horde of the undead than discuss her feelings. 

About once a week, Aurora will say, “It’s not fair to Phillip. And I have a responsibility to the kingdom,” and Mulan will agree. When she is gone, Aurora and Phillip will find strength in each other, which will in turn strengthen their rule. This, of course, she keeps to herself. She wants to make these last few months the happiest of her life.

*

The season turns to summer; the baby is due in a month. Mulan wakes each morning thinking of how soft her bed is, how good the baker’s first batch of hot fresh bread tastes at breakfast, how marvelous a cool bath feels after a long day of maneuvers. Physical indulgences, so long denied for the austerity of the road or a soldier’s billet, become something to savor. She begins to ask Aurora to spend more time in the arboretum, learning about the plants there. She never had much in the way of time for flora that wasn’t of tactical use. Medicines and poisons she can recognize instantly, but the merely decorative are beyond the scope of her knowledge.

Aurora shows her how to make cuttings, and together they plant a new rose bush from Aurora’s favorite, which has large, cheerful, yellow blooms. Mulan misses lotus flowers, but they are not native to this land. She draws one for Aurora from memory, even painting it in with watercolors in her unpracticed hand. It turns out quite well; it is gratifying to know that her skill with a brush has not completely atrophied. Aurora encourages her to try other kinds of paint on actual canvas and she does, finding a little time each day to work on a small painting that reminds her of her native land. If it turns out well she will bequeath it to Aurora.

She tries other new things: sweets so sugary they make her teeth ache, dicing with some of the men (standing them a few rounds of drinks when she loses brings many of the stiff ones around on her), and once a quick-to-end session of hide and seek with Mathilde and her friends. Mulan climbed up into the ceiling of the postern with instructions to the guards that they should point the children in her direction if they asked, then waited patiently until a gaggle of five children blundered in. She dropped down amongst them, sending them shrieking into the courtyard, and ignored Aurora’s laughter at her during dinner.

The night of her hide and seek misadventure, she neatly stores her armor, changes into a soft shirt and pants, and goes to bed as usual. She sleeps less these days, but what rest she does get feels more satisfying somehow. The smoke from blowing out the candles has just cleared when someone knocks on her door. She pads over silently on bare feet, instinctively knowing who it is. 

“May I come in?” Aurora asks.

Wordlessly, Mulan holds the door open wide enough for her to enter. 

Aurora is in her dressing gown and slippers and her hair is loose down her back without adornment. She looks younger than her years and Mulan wants desperately to hold her. “Can I sleep here tonight?” Aurora asks.

Still without speaking, Mulan returns to her bed and folds down the covers. She slides in first, all the way to the far edge to make room for Aurora, who gingerly lowers herself down until she can roll onto her side with her back facing Mulan. Mulan doesn’t need to ask, but presses against Aurora, arm going around her body just below her breasts where her stomach begins to curve. They slept like this all the time when they traveled, especially on cold nights or when Aurora’s control slipped and the curse nightmares returned. To Mulan, it’s as though she’s returning to a place once thought lost.

“She’s kicking tonight,” Aurora says, left hand stroking her stomach.

“May I?”

Aurora takes Mulan’s hand and guides it to a spot next to her distended belly button and sure enough, there comes the faintest nudge against her palm. Mulan is glad Aurora is not able to see the foolish grin on her face. “Your child is strong,” she says. “She will be a great ruler one day.”

“I’d settle for a quiet baby tonight,” Aurora replies, but not without gratitude.

Mulan hums out an agreement. Aurora’s hair smells sweet, like flowers, different from the scents of earth and sweat they carried when they traveled. Mulan decides she likes both equally and closes her eyes.

*

Aurora returns to her room a few nights a week from then on. If Phillip is aware that she is going to Mulan, he carefully does not say anything. She and Phillip discuss palace business, occasionally exchange banal pleasantries, but nothing like their wine-soaked night of confessions and apologies. Sometimes they hunt together, a few hours of silence between them where they communicate with looks, nods, gestures. Phillip seems most content with her when they are dividing up a deer for venison and she accepts what he is willing to give.

One day, when they have successfully shot a brace of quail each and are preparing to return to the castle, Mulan stops after slinging her birds into her saddlebags. Phillip waits for her to mount, but she clasps him on the bicep. “If possible, I would prefer my body be returned to my land,” she says. 

There is no confusion; Mulan’s wish is omnipresent these days with the baby so close. “I will see that it is done. You have my word,” says Phillip. 

“Brother,” Mulan says simply.

“Sister,” he replies, clasping her opposite bicep. 

Thereafter they are the comrades of old and Mulan thinks that she is almost ready to say goodbye.

*

Aurora is bursting, a flower on the vine waiting only for the least dewdrop to bloom riotously. A week, perhaps less, the midwives all agree. 

One day for lunch she asks Mulan to take her outside the palace walls so she can enjoy the sun and fresh air. Mulan handpicks a small retinue of guards and rides with Aurora in a carriage to a nearby meadow of soft grass and patches of daisies. The guard retreat to a discreet distance when they arrive and Mulan helps Aurora over to a spot where she has spread a blanket and some pillows. Once Aurora is neatly propped up and the food is unpacked from their basket, they eat and talk merrily and Aurora weaves a daisy chain and forces Mulan to wear it.

The sun is low in the sky when Mulan packs up. But when Aurora holds out her hands expectantly so Mulan can pull her up, Mulan kneels next to her instead. She takes those hands, folding them up with her own. “Aurora,” she says.

Aurora frowns at the seriousness of Mulan’s face. “What’s the matter?”

“I am happiest when I am with you,” says Mulan. 

“You make me happy too,” says Aurora.

“I wish it were possible that I could make you happy for the rest of your days.” Mulan looks down at their joined hands, hers tanned darker and tapering more at the fingers, Aurora’s with fewer calluses but still marked by her gardening. 

“And you will,” says Aurora, beginning to understand the direction of the conversation, her face darkening with displeasure. “Mulan, it’s not certain that anything will happen. You can’t go into this already thinking you’ve lost.”

“It is not losing,” Mulan says fiercely. “To ensure your life and the life of your child is a great victory. It is a worthy death. Let me have my choice.”

Aurora refuses. “We both get a say in this and I say my choice is you.” Mulan tries to yank her hands away, fighting against Aurora’s stubbornness the only way she can. Aurora just holds on more tightly. “I’m not going to marry Phillip. We will rule our kingdoms together, but as allies, not as husband and wife.”

“You cannot—”

“Don’t you get it?” Aurora pleads. “I love you too. I thought I loved Phillip because—because I was supposed to. Because everyone told me having a handsome prince save me was the perfect story. I met Phillip when I was so young. And then you happened but I was too caught up in all my expectations.” She uses her deceptive strength to pull Mulan closer to her. “I’m sorry. I love you. Please stay. Fight, like you always do.”

Mulan comes the rest of the way willingly. She raises Aurora’s hands to her lips, pressing there for a long moment. “If that is what you want, I will do it.”

“It’s what I want, Mulan,” Aurora says, emotionally spent. “So you can stop being foolishly noble and help me up so we can go home.”

A quick laugh, another kiss to Aurora’s hands, and Mulan does just that. She smiles and consents to let Aurora press warmly against her in the carriage, but inside she wonders if a proper goodbye would have been kinder than getting everything she ever wanted. But closer to the palace she decides not to waste this gift. If she only has a few days left, then at least they will be perfect. 

*

Aurora goes into labor just after breakfast. Mulan, not yet in her armor for the day, is slicing an apple for the two of them while Phillip sits nearby, reading through a sheaf of taxation clauses that make Mulan glad he is the ruler and not her. Aurora has been wincing all morning, but now it is too pronounced to ignore. Mulan and Phillip notice at the same time that Aurora is gripping the edge of the table and exchange hunting glances.

“I’ll fetch the midwives,” says Mulan. “You get her to her bed.”

The midwives bustle into Aurora’s bedroom in a whirlwind of efficiency. Before Mulan can quite figure out what is happening, she and Phillip have been shooed into the outer chamber while a steady stream of servants bringing supplies replaces them. 

Phillip is a bundle of nerves, but he is nothing compared to Mulan, who is caught in the grip of her memories of the other timeline. Will the birth be easier? Harder? When will her time come? Will she be allowed to see Aurora’s face one last time, to greet the child she has sacrificed everything to protect?

Phillip orders food, wine, and a chess set brought to them and he coaxes Mulan into playing a few games with him. Sure enough, after losing to Phillip twice in a row she becomes just frustrated enough to concentrate more on the game than on worrying and she checkmates him handily. “I have left a list in my room,” she says while resetting the board. “Instructions on how to dispose of my belongings.”

“Of course,” says Phillip, as though they’re discussing the best ways to train hounds.

“There are several gifts in the dresser for the baby, to be given to her on her birthday for the next few years.”

“Ah, you’ve saved me the trouble of getting gifts for a few years. My thanks.” 

Impishly, Mulan tips over his king with a flick of her forefinger. She is glad Phillip is here to provide a little gallows humor, soldier to soldier. 

They play a few more rounds, then switch to Go, which Mulan has been attempting to teach Phillip since they met. She leads him around the board, trying not to surround him too quickly, but Phillip grows reckless and does not defend correctly. The game is over too soon and they have hours yet to pass.

By the time a midwife comes for them, they have exhausted the castle’s games and are resorting to arm wrestling by the fire. Mulan’s heart is pounding and not just from the effort. This time the midwife is smiling, not ashen, and there is a happy murmur in Aurora’s bedroom instead of a grey silence. Phillip lets Mulan go first but stays close in case of—whatever it is that might happen. 

Mulan walks swiftly to Aurora’s side, where tired mother and fussing child are waiting. Aurora’s mouth twitches and Mulan understands it is a smile. “I have a daughter,” she says, voice hoarse after straining so hard for so long. “Her name is Leah, after my mother.”

“Leah,” Mulan says. Her hand hovers reverently over the baby’s pink forehead, wanting to stroke the light downy hair, hold the tiny little fingers. 

Phillip joins them and takes his daughter in his arms, eyes shining. “My daughter. Leah.” He cannot stop looking at his child, amazed by her already. 

Mulan backs away, watching the new family with contentment. Let this be the last thing she sees. She is ready—until she jumps straight into the air at the tapping sound on the window behind her.

“What is it?” asks Phillip, cradling Leah protectively. 

Mulan peers into the darkness, shielding her eyes from the light with a hand braced against the window. A swirl of glittering gold startles her into backing up. 

“You gonna let me in?” Mira asks impatiently, her voice sounding tinny through the glass.

Mulan slides the latch and pushes open the window so Mira can dart inside. “What are you doing here?”

Mira flies right to Phillip, peering into the swaddling to try to get a good look at the baby. “I got here just in time!” 

Aurora, who is no stranger to fairies appearing at important occasions, nudges Phillip from behind. “It’s okay. Let her see.”

Reluctantly he turns Leah in his arms just enough to angle her face towards Mira. 

“I found more fairy dust!” Mira announces, patting a fat pouch at her waist. She draws a wand from her belt and Phillip instinctively withdraws, backing up against the bed. Mulan is slowly closing in on them, ready to pounce on Mira from behind if she must.

“It’s okay,” Aurora says again. Phillip and Mulan lose a little of their tension, but not much.

“Now let me see,” Mira says, tapping her teeth with the wand. She snaps her miniscule fingers. “Got just the thing!” The wand waves over Leah’s head, christening her with magic.

“What was that?” asks Mulan, examining the baby for changes but seeing none.

“Her present of course,” says Mira, looking satisfied. The wand goes back into her belt. “What kind of fairy godmother would I be if I didn’t bring a present? Leah will have…” Mira pauses for effect. “Perfect teeth for as long as she lives.”

“Perfect teeth?” Aurora asks, dismayed. “My fairy godmothers gave me beauty, grace, and escape from what should have been a fatal curse.”

Mira turns slightly sulky. “Well I thought it was a good gift.”

“I thank you for it,” says Phillip graciously. “I had to have a tooth pulled when I was a boy. Excruciating. One never realizes how vital teeth are until one must make do without them.”

“Wait,” says Mulan, desperate to interrupt before this can go farther. “What about my wish? Why am I not dead?”

“Mulan!” Aurora says sharply. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to be fatalistic about this.”

“I offered an exchange, my life for yours and Leah’s,” Mulan insists. “That was the wish and Mira said it worked. You’re both alive, so why am I still here?”

“Oops.”

Three sets of eyes turn towards the guilty fairy in their midst. 

“Did I not mention that?” asks Mira. “It was a selfless wish. So it was granted without a price.”

For what feels like the hundredth time, Mulan wishes it weren’t a mortal offense to use a flyswatter on a fairy. “ _No you did not mention this._ ”

“Have you been thinking all this time…?” Mira covers her face with her hands. “I am the worst fairy in all the land.”

Mulan is too furious to say otherwise.

*

Eventually Mulan calms down. Mira is put up in guest lodging (the farthest quarters from Mulan’s) and Aurora falls into the sleep of the truly exhausted. Phillip and Mulan stay awake, watching Leah in her bassinet, each nursing a mug of celebratory mead. Mulan thinks she has never tasted a better drink in her life. 

“So about those gifts…” Phillip begins.

“Get your own,” says Mulan.

They erupt into choked laughter, each trying to shush the other before they wake Aurora or Leah. 

“To your continued life, long may it be,” says Phillip, raising his mug.

“To your daughter, may she be happy and prosperous,” says Mulan. They toast.

“You know, it’s going to be strange for a while,” Phillip muses, looking down into his mug while he tilts it back and forth. “You and Aurora in the castle.”

“Phillip—”

“Perhaps it’s just the relief of having you alive,” he continues, the lack of sleep and the alcohol loosening his tongue. “But I think I’ve made my peace with it. Or I will, at any rate. Just treat her well?”

“As though my life depended on it,” says Mulan. They toast again. The midwives end up chasing them out of the room and they are found the next morning passed out in the armory. The gossip afterwards is the best the castle has ever seen.


	4. Epilogue

ONE YEAR LATER

“Mulan, you’re going to spoil her.” Aurora clucks her tongue.

“She deserves several gifts. And I happened to have several, so I see no reason not to give them all to her now.” Mulan rearranges the pile of presents for the third time, aware in the back of her mind that Leah absolutely does not care a single bit if her gift pile is aesthetically pleasing but unable to stop herself.

Aurora stops Mulan’s worrying hands with a touch. “Phillip told me about that. It was very sweet of you, in a terribly sad way.”

“Ah,” says Mulan. “You weren’t supposed to know—”

“That you really were prepared to die?” Aurora lays a slow, tender kiss on Mulan’s cheek. “Yes, you noble idiot. Of course I knew.”

“Better a noble idiot than an idiot noble,” Mulan mutters, unable to respond with anything else since they both know the description is apt. 

Aurora twines her arms about Mulan’s neck. “Better alive and happy and here with me.” She kisses Mulan once, twice, simple and chaste, then deeper, warmer. Mulan is happy to forgive being called names for the feeling of Aurora pressing solidly against her. She wants to lift Aurora into her arms and carry her away to a private place, but they have a birthday to attend. Reluctantly, she lets Aurora stop, sealing a promise of _later_ with a kiss on the corner of her mouth. 

Phillip joins them presently with Leah burbling in his arms. Only a year old, she looks to be the spitting image of Aurora. Mulan and Phillip dote on her shamelessly.

“Goodness Mulan, did you get her all that?” Phillip asks, looking at the gift pile. “Now I have to get her more presents to match.”

Aurora gives Mulan a look that says plainly _You see what you did?_ Mulan can’t really find it within herself to be sorry.


End file.
